Short Dental Implants Show 91% 10-Year Survival in Meta-Analysis

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Posted: June 5, 2026

Short Dental Implants Show 91% 10-Year Survival in Meta-Analysis

Edited by Dentaltown staff

Short dental implants measuring 6 millimeters or less achieved a pooled 10-year survival rate of 91.2% at the patient level and 93.7% at the implant level, according to a systematic review and sensitivity meta-analysis published June 1 in BMC Oral Health.

The review pooled data from eight studies — four randomized controlled trials and four prospective studies — identified through searches of PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and the Cochrane Library. A sensitivity analysis that interpolated missing data produced slightly lower estimates of 89.7% at the patient level and 92.8% at the implant level.

A separate paired comparison of the four randomized trials found that short implants had a significantly lower 10-year survival rate than longer implants, with relative risks of 0.920 at the patient level and 0.943 at the implant level. That comparison found no significant differences between short and long implants in technical complications, biological complications or marginal bone loss.

Across the included studies, technical complications occurred at a rate of 23.5%. Biological complications included peri-implant mucositis at 33.6% and peri-implantitis at 0.4%. Pooled marginal bone loss over 10 years was 0.277 mm at both the patient and implant levels. Subgroup analysis indicated that screw-retained implants had lower survival than cemented restorations.

The authors concluded that short implants may be a viable long-term option for patients with jawbone atrophy, while cautioning that their 10-year survival is slightly lower than that of standard implants and that the findings should be interpreted carefully given the review’s limitations.

The review was conducted by Linni Lin, Yijie Ren, Enhui Zhu, Xia Wang and Qianqian Yao of the Center of Stomatology at the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, in Changsha, China. It was published online June 1 as an unedited manuscript provided for early access, ahead of final editing.

Sources:
BMC Oral Health, “Ten-year outcomes of short dental implants (≤ 6 mm): a systematic review and sensitivity meta-analysis,” by Linni Lin et al., June 1, 2026 (DOI 10.1186/s12903-026-08742-4): link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12903-026-08742-4
PubMed, listing for the same study, PMID 42226287: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42226287


Short Dental Implants Show 91% 10-Year Survival in Meta-Analysis

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